


Dark Cherry Chapstick

by Colubrina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Hogwarts Eighth Year, goth!hermione
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 21:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20432360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: Hermione returns for an optional 8th year after the war, and Draco Malfoy, also back at Hogwarts at his mother's request, notices she's changed.





	Dark Cherry Chapstick

Hermione Granger had changed.

That was the first thing Draco Malfoy thought as he slunk, sullen, resentful, and stuck, into their first Potions class. Go back and do this eighth-year program, his mother had said. Be a kid among your friends without having to worry about war and death and terror. Go heal.

As if that were possible.

He was an outcast, the failure, the loathed Death Eater, and there was no healing for him. But if it made his mother happy he'd spend a year in school with people who let their eyes slide over him as if he weren't there. He'd lived through worse.

So now he sat in Potions, a veritable ghost, and watched Hermione Granger walk into the room and thought that she had changed.

Well, of course, she'd changed. You couldn't fight a war, couldn't endure what she'd endured, and come out unscathed. Still, Draco hadn't expected to see her with her hair darkened, heavy eye makeup, and a sullen expression to match his own. He certainly didn't expect her to slide into the seat next to his, slouch down, and fold her arms across her chest. She looked at him and said, "Problem, Malfoy?"

"No," he said. "No problem."

Not many of their peers had returned and 7th Year Potions was filled with actual seventh-year students, all of whom seemed appallingly young and cheerful to Draco, none of whom acknowledged his presence.

He began to be amused as each of them looked at the woman next to him with hero worship in their eyes only to get first confused, then upset she was sitting with him.

"Does the adulation start to chafe after a while," he asked as they began chopping ingredients for the day's assignment, letting his tone be as mean and resentful as he felt.

He watched her hands as she meticulously sliced tubers into identical, paper-thin slices. She'd painted her nails the color of coagulated blood, and he found her furious mockery of conventional feminine rituals oddly reassuring. She was as angry and lost as he was. "Your nail's chipped, by the way," he added.

"I hate it," she said, sliding the tubers into their cauldron. She wiped her hands off on a towel and held her hand out and examined the offending nail. "Imperfect mudblood," she said, and Draco made an involuntary jerk at hearing her use the slur. She smiled, a smile laced with mockery though whether she was mocking him or herself, he wasn't sure. "It was the closest color to muddy blood I could find. After that final battle, I'm rather well acquainted with the colour of blood mixed in with dirt."

He nodded. They worked in silence for the rest of their brewing, chopping, mixing, and stirring as if they'd been a team for years. As they bottled their perfect sample, he said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" she asked.

"Everything," he said, and she nodded.

When Slughorn announced they had to pair up to do projects - see if you create a unique potion of your own, the man enthused - Granger turned to him and said, "Partners?"

"Why?" he asked.

"You're the only person here I can stand," she said. 

"Everyone loves you," he said, remembering with some bitterness the days everyone had loved him. Now Vince, who'd gotten scary by the end, was dead and even Pansy wouldn't return his owls. Apparently, that hadn't been true love after all.

"They don't even know me," Granger was saying. "And even if that crap fawning bullshite they seem to feel were real it doesn't mean I like them."

"You like me?" he scoffed.

She snorted. "I don't despise you; how's that?"

He shrugged. "Partners, then," he said.

"Take me to Hogsmeade this weekend," she said. "We can brainstorm ideas."

He smirked at her, feeling the first flash of happiness he'd had in a while. "Granger," he said and, when she looked at him, he smirked even more broadly. "Look cute."

She opened her mouth, probably in outrage, then curled her lips up in a smirk of her own and licked those painted lips with her tongue, mesmerizing him. "I can do that."

She met him in the front hall, and he raked his eyes over her in frank appreciation. "A bit much with the black, Granger," was all he said, and she shrugged. Her nails had been freshly painted that dark blood color, and today her lips were so dark they were almost as black as the tight skirt she had on.

"I don't want to be critical," he said as they started the walk to the village, and she snorted, "but what brought on this dramatic image change?"

"I was a good girl for my whole life," she said. "That left me on the front lines of a war against a madman for a bunch of arseholes who still won't give me a job at the Ministry because I'm a mudblood."

"So that's why you're back?" he asked. 

"Nailed it in one," she said. "Harry and Ron were both accepted into Auror training without finishing school because of their war work but not me. I'm not good enough for that." She held her hand out and wiggled her nails. "Mudblood."

"That's fucked up," he said. "I like the clothes, though."

"No one else does," she said with what he thought sounded like smug satisfaction. "Molly told me I looked cheap."

"What did you say to that?" He supposed it was rude to ask, but curiosity was a powerful motivator.

"I told her I might be cheap, but I was still more than Ron could afford."

Draco almost choked at that. 

"Professor McGonagall told me I was ruining my future prospects," she continued, "so I told her that I doubted a little makeup in school would do more damage than what having had the incredibly bad taste to be born to Muggles had already done. She told me it wasn't as bad as I thought it was as long as I made myself look presentable and I told her she had no clue what she was fucking talking about." 

Draco stopped walking and stared at the goody-two-shoes swot he'd resented for years. She looked at the expression on his face and smiled in utter, genuine amusement. "No, I really did. And she told me to watch my language, and I said I'd lost my childhood to a war fighting for people who turned out to despise me just a little more politely than the other side, and I'd use whatever language I bloody well liked.

"She hasn't spoken to me since though I found a book on managing anger on my desk in her class the next day."

"You're something else, Granger," he said.

She might be angry, she might be embracing clothes tighter, shorter and blacker than he ever would have thought to see her in, but she was still a stubbornly determined student, and over tea and biscuits they laid out a research project that actually excited him; he found himself writing to his mother talking about his potions project and how much he enjoyed working on it. 

He didn't tell her who his partner was. He didn't want to read any commiseration he had to work with the Muggle-born. Didn't want to see that prejudice on paper in front of him from the only other woman he cared about. Hermione Granger didn't despise him, despite everything. She was the only bright spot in his days, and he didn't want his mother somehow sullying that.

It was bad enough when some random student he didn't even know told him that as soon as Hermione Granger got over her 'war crap' she'd regret wasting any time on Death Eater scum and that he should do the right thing for once in his miserable, worthless life and stop taking advantage.

He'd already hoisted his book bag up onto his shoulder and turned to walk away silently when he heard a loud slap. Jerking back around, he saw Hermione Granger glaring at the kid. The kid had tried to explain himself, and Hermione just said, her tone low and filled with loathing, "We all did what we had to."

"He shouldn't even be allowed near you," the kid muttered. "You shouldn't want him near you."

She looked at the boy as if he were a fouled potions ingredient she was about to bin. Draco appreciated her defense, he supposed, though it seemed rather humiliating to even need defending, and he was about to walk away from the whole confrontation when the witch was approaching him and as she got closer he backed away until he realized he was pressed into the wall and she had one hand on each side of his face and her mouth on his.

That dark lipstick tasted rather disconcertingly like cherry Chapstick.

He didn't want the audience they'd accumulated to know exactly how shocked he was by this sudden kiss, so he slouched against the wall and twined his hands into her hair as he casually slipped his tongue into her mouth.

She stiffened against him at that, and he smirked to himself. So she thought she could just use him like this to make some point to one of her little admirers, did she, and still keep total control of the situation? Well, he wasn't her little pet, and he wasn't quite that tame.

"Miss Granger!" The censorious voice of Professor McGonagall scattered the remaining students, and Hermione Granger pulled herself away from Draco with insolent slowness. 

"Yes, Professor?" she asked as Draco wiped the lipstick off his mouth with the heel of his hand.

"Move along," the woman said. 

Draco found Hermione Granger's hand in his as they scooped up their bags and sauntered off down the hall.

He hadn't even known Hermione Granger knew how to saunter.

Once they were alone, he dropped her hand. "Next time, ask," he said.

"You're open to the idea of a next time?" she said, and it was his turn to press her into the wall.

"If you ask," he said.

She smiled at him as he stood there, hands pinning her forearms against the stones. "I'm asking," she said, and he gripped her more tightly, feeling his bluff called, before he picked one hand up and brushed her hair away from her mouth. He stared at those lips with their smudged stain and thought of the way she'd tasted like anger and innocence at the same time and how she was the only thing he liked about this year. He thought about where this would go, how he could kiss her and, he was pretty sure, bed her. How they could throw their bodies and rage against one another as waves crashing into rocks and how that would surely numb everything for a while.

Then he stepped backward.

"No." He shook his head.

"Don't want to sully yourself with the mudblood?" she taunted.

He closed his eyes for a moment, felt her words like a slap, and then returned them with an honesty he suspected would be just as brutal.

"I'll kiss you when it's because you like me, if it ever is. Not because you're angry at the world. I’m not your toy."

"You're angry too," she said, her voice almost a hiss in the empty hallway.

"And I like you - respect you - too much to just use you as a drug to help me cope with that." He gave her a long look before leaving her there to go to Charms. "I wish you felt the same way about me."

She didn't speak to him for a week after that parting shot.

When she did finally talk to him, it was in the library. He was working on researching ingredient interactions for their project when she joined him at what had, prior to the kissing incident, become their table. "I'm sorry," she said.

He just slid the book he was looking at across the table to her. "I think the problem might be the use of tubers and shrivelfigs together."

She glanced at the passage he had his finger at but said only, "Friends?"

"Are we?" he asked.

"If you'll let me," she said and reached her hand out towards him. 

He laced his fingers through hers and said, "Your stupid polish is chipped again, Granger." 

He was right about the shrivelfig problem, and their potion project began to come together after that. Hermione started sitting with him at one end of the Slytherin table, ignoring the way his Housemates ignored him, ignoring the way people gasped the first time she sat down there.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” Draco said one morning as she pulled an old potions journal out of her ratty bag and flipped it open to an article on powdered basilisk scale and its use as an intensifier. 

“There’s no rule against it,” she said. “I checked. Hermione glanced up at the table of Gryffindors, all staring at her as she looked over the Slytherin marmalade selection. “If I’d known you people had the blood orange spread I might have come over sooner,” she added, spooning some of the spread in question onto her toast. 

“You’re making everyone uncomfortable,” he said, his amusement growing as she licked a little marmalade she’d gotten on her finger off in what had to be a deliberately provocative movement.

She shrugged. “You know, after last year I’m not all that bothered by people who think I’m sitting in the wrong place. You?”

He laughed, the first time he’d laughed in longer than he could remember. “Yeah.” He was spooning some of the marmalade onto his own plate and not looking at her when he asked, “Was it awful?”

She set her knife down, and he could hear her inhale once. Then she said, “Yes. It was pretty bad.” She didn’t move for another long moment, and then she said, “For you?”

“Yeah,” he said, still not looking at her. 

“At least I get to be the hero afterward,” she said, and he snorted.

“Yes, because I’ve noticed how much you like that,” he said. Draco turned to Hermione, and she was smiling at him. If her eyes were haunted, they were also crinkling with a bit of a real grin. 

“Come with me to the lake after classes?” she asked, and he felt his throat tighten, and his stomach clench, but all he did was shrug.

“Where should I meet you?”

“Side entrance by the ugly statue of the mermaid?” she suggested, and he nodded.

Professor McGonagall stopped them both in the hall as they were leaving breakfast and said, her voice strained, that she would like to speak to them both, if they wouldn’t mind, in her office. Now. Once safely behind her door, she looked at Hermione and said, “Miss Granger, I wanted to talk to you _again_ about your current… presentation.” She turned to Draco. “Mr. Malfoy, would you please tell her this heavy makeup is not flattering?”

Draco looked at the woman in disbelief. Did she really think he’d sit here and, on command, tell the only person who acknowledged his existence that he didn’t like her eyeliner? He turned to Hermione, who had fury simmering under the challenging look in her eyes. She’d layered on quite a bit of that eyeliner this morning along with one of her black-blood lipsticks, and she had some kind of black choker at her neck. He shrugged.

“I think she looks nice,” he said, his tone bland. 

“Mr. Malfoy,” Professor McGonagall sounded irritated now, but he cut her off.

“I don’t care whether Hermione paints her face this way, wears no makeup at all, or wears whatever pink lip gloss you’ve decided is appropriate. She looks beautiful to me no matter what, and I don’t appreciate you putting me on the spot like this.” He could feel himself simmering now. Why did everyone think he was some puppet whose strings they could pull to get him to do whatever they wanted? Fix the cabinet. Go back to school. Tell the girl she looks bad because she’s not listening to me. He just wanted to bloody well be left alone.

“Mr. Malfoy,” she tried again, “Surely you know your mother – women in the wizarding world – wouldn’t approve of this kind of… makeup and clothing. I just want Miss Granger to – “

“Did you ever even _see_ my crazy Aunt Bella?” Draco demanded and avoided looking at Hermione who was making a sound now like she was trying not to laugh; if he made eye contact, he was fairly sure he’d lose his outrage and just start snickering with her. “I can assure you that, after that daft bint, Hermione’s eyeliner wouldn’t even rate a second look in my family.”

“But, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Granger isn’t… she’s a… she won’t have…”

“Are you trying to say I’m a mudblood so I should make sure to dress properly?” Hermione injected.

“I’m just trying to help you,” Professor McGonagall said, sounding flustered. “That’s not what I mean at all.”

Draco looked over at Hermione who had her arms crossed again, and her eyes narrowed as she glared at the woman she’d adored for years; this fall, though, she’d made the mistake of moving outside the box of good girl, and she’d found out how little tolerance the old cat had for bad girls. “It sure sounds to me like it’s what you mean,” Draco said. “It sure sounds like you’re saying that pureblood crazies like Bellatrix can wear what they like, but girls like Hermione need to toe the line.”

“I realize, Mr. Malfoy, that you have lived a life of privilege and you might not be aware – “ the woman began again.

“Are you really going to try to tell me I don’t know what she’s going to face as a Muggle-born?” he asked, conjuring his best bored and condescending voice. “Because, I assure you, near-daily lectures on the inherent unworthiness of people like her have dogged my whole life.”

“Then surely you understand that she’s going to have to – “

“She’s not going to have to do _anything_,” he said. “She saved your arse from Voldemort, and I am really very, _very_ well informed on just how awful he was. If she wants to sit around eating chocolates for the rest of her life, you should all beg for the privilege of fetching them for her.” He stood up. “Can we go now? Because we both need to get to class.”

Professor McGonagall pressed her lips together into a thin line and nodded. He held his hand out to Hermione and, without looking back, led her out into the hallway.

“Well, now you know,” Hermione said as they walked away from the office.

“That McGonagall’s a prejudiced old bat?” he snorted. “I’ve known that for years. Welcome to not being a teacher’s pet.”

Hermione looked over at him, and instead of the anger he expected at that dig, she grinned at him again. “See you by the ugly mermaid later?”

When they finally walked down to the lake after their classes, she was the one who took his hand. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?” he asked.

“The thing with McGonagall,” she said, and he tugged her closer to him and wrapped an arm around her shoulder as they stopped walking for a moment. 

“Stupid old tabby,” he said. “Just because she’s got a stick up her arse, she thinks you should be in dumpy tartans too, and maybe one of those bulky jumpers Molly Weasley used to make you when she thought you were going to go and marry her Ronald.”

“What makes you think I’m not going to marry Ron,” Hermione said, though since she leaned her head up against him as she asked that Draco suspected it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else.

“You mean other than because he’s a git who went off to Auror training without you and hasn’t so much owled you since the year started?”

“You noticed that, huh?” Hermione muttered, and Draco laughed. 

“How about the minor problem his mother thinks you look like a tramp? I know you’re smart enough to avoid the utter, living hell of having Molly Weasley as a mother-in-law.”

Hermione snickered at that.

Draco pulled away a bit then and looked down at her. She’d shucked her school robes before meeting him – a flagrant violation of some rule or other he was sure – and had some long black skirt on with a corset that shoved her breasts up in a way that left very little mystery as to her figure. “I do miss your hair,” he said at last. “I like the rest of your crazy makeover that has McGonagall’s knickers in such a twist, but I miss that bushy, brown mess that was so utterly you.”

“So utterly me?” she asked, touching her dyed hair a little self-consciously.

“Just… it did what it wanted and didn’t give a fuck,” he said. “Like you.” He started walking back towards the lake again. “I always wanted approval so much, you know. You just… you’ve never seemed to care whether people liked you or not and now that they all just adore you you’re doing everything you can to make them go away.”

She’d stared after him when he started walking away, and it took her a moment to catch up. “They all just like the stupid war heroine crap,” she said, and he grabbed her hand again. “Ron does too. He… he likes being the center of attention like that.”

“Another reason you’re not going to marry him,” Draco agreed and the way she shifted her hand to twine her fingers through his - the way he could almost feel her smiling though his eyes were fixed on the lake they were making their way toward – gave him the courage to add the last reason. “Plus, of course, I’m going to make you fall in love with me, and you’re going to marry me, and that leaves Weasley right out.”

Her step faltered at that, but she didn’t let go of his hand. He took that as, at the very least, a ‘maybe.’

“We should probably start with kissing,” she said at last, “before you work your way all the way to a proposal.”

“You’re asking?” he said, stopping again to look at her.

“Yeah,” she said.

It really was weird how that dark lipstick tasted so much like cherry Chapstick. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on FFN in March of 2015.


End file.
